Tides of Fate: King Kirk’s Tragic End and the Road to Zipping Classic

Perhaps the freak circumstance of King Kirk’s drowning this week has taken the spotlight off Caulfield’s Zipping Classic on Saturday but has a link to the Festival Stakes at Rosehill Gardens.

Maybe the Zipping Classic isn’t as good as it was: the switch from Sandown is a negative, but the Group two staying test has a history of character, greats and fields with Melbourne Cup winners in the honour roll.

And it continues a very successful Melbourne Spring, over shadowing the Festival Stakes, a strong betting medium, following the Sydney mishap during the week.

Promising two-year-old, King Kirk came to grief in the Randwick swimming pool due to “an incident when he panicked causing him to swallow a significant amount of water in the process,” according to the official explanation.

Usually thoroughbreds are comfortable in water, be in salt or, in the extreme, flood which puts the King Kirk misfortune in the exceptional category.

Tulloch Lodge, now the capitol of the Gai Waterhouse – Adrian Bott bone and muscle conglomerate, prepared King Kirk and has an imposing record of water survivors.

Long before equine swimming pools became fashionable, around 1200 horses a week now use the Randwick facility, Tom Smith, then master of Tulloch Lodge, sent his horses to Coogee and later La Perouse for sea recuperation mainly on Sundays. Imagine thoroughbreds gallivanting down Coogee Bay Road? It was cheaper than horse transport. Sometimes impromptu races with strappers and apprentices astride eventuated. No casualties were reported.

Regal Rhythm was a Smith topliner. Folklore maintains at La Perouse the gelding cleared away from the rowing boat used to tow him and headed for Kurnell in Botany Bay. Reports indicate he stretched and blew as horses do in water but made the return journey in shark infested conditions.

Just how far is still a matter of conjecture but he returned to score at his next start. Regal Rhythm won the Festival in 1969 but Ernie Smith, brother of Tom and prime cog in the Tulloch Lodge wheel, maintained it wasn’t the greatest water feat by one of their horses.

Earlier Davalmarne, Ernie Smith related, broke clear from his attendant and headed for the open sea around Coogee.

“Most of the time a horse will return to the boat that leads them but Davalomarne didn’t until he was well past that Island off Coogee,” Smith related.

“Then he came around unassisted.” Davalomarne won the following Saturday at Randwick and two consecutive races after.

But that was the briny and we, who partake at Bronte, know it is more beneficial and easier to handle than fresh.

However AJC Derby winner Martello Towers, who ended up at Tulloch Lodge, when spelling out Richmond way went missing for 10 hours in the 1961 Hawkesbury floods but found high ground.

Alas there is no happy ending for King Kirk. Tulloch Lodge has two in the Festival this year. On form they look better placed in a Bronte to Bondi ocean dip.   

Tulloch Lodge, though, has the Lloyd Williams influence in the Zipping with Serpentine, an eight-year-old, who at times gives the impression of galloping as fast as a horse swims.

Williams, of course, owned Zipping, winner of the event four times. In fact Williams won it every second year from 2003 to 2018 but hasn’t had a starter for the last six.

Once being an eight-year-old was a major negative. Still there are four of the same vintage racing against Serpentine and three nine-year-olds, including Vow And Declare, triumphant in the 2019 Melbourne Cup.

My selection is Arapaho, also eight, but raced like a five-year-old two starts back and don’t let his last fifth, beaten under six lengths, be a deterrent. The winner was Via Sistina. Heavy or slow ground is another plus for him.

As expected Ciaron Maher has a strong, seasoned representation: four acceptors, two eight and two nine-years. Perhaps the best will be Smoking Romans, a front-running Flemington winner recently.

Maher notched the two majors at Cranbourne and Kembla Grange last Saturday with Nadal (Meteorite) and Gringotts (Gong) who have Ossie Keir and John O’Neill in the ownership. They combine again with St Lawrence, successful in his last two, in the Festival.

St Lawrence likes it wet and if the weather forecast is an indication, it will be Rosehill awash, conditions that suited Regal Rhythm.